A proposal that would allow governments to charge a labor
fee for time-intensive public records requests would restrict access to
information and undermine open government, a media attorney told
lawmakers Thursday.

“Bottom line is public records in Arizona belong to the people. They
don’t belong to government officials, they don’t belong to government
bureaucrats and they don’t belong to public bodies,” said Chris Moeser,
representing Phoenix Newspapers Inc. and KPNX-TV before the House
Committee on Technology and Infrastructure.

But René G. Guillen Jr., legislative director for the League of
Arizona Cities and Towns, said some municipalities are overwhelmed by
the number of requests combined with the requirement under state law to
fulfill them promptly.

“It can become an all-hands-on-deck in order to fulfill public record requests,” Guillen said.

Proposed by Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista, in a striker amendment to HB
2419, a bill he authored on another subject, the replacement measure would allow
governments to charge for public record requests that take longer than
four hours to fulfill.

The fee would include reimbursement for the cost of labor to obtain
the copies, printouts or photographs, calculated in hourly wages
following the four-hour mark.

Stevens said several people have mentioned to him the difficulties
governments have complying with large numbers of public records
requests, and Guillen said sometimes many of those requests are
submitted by one or two people – for example, an individual in Yuma who
made 46 requests in 44 days.

“You don’t want to make a law on two people and punish the whole state,” Stevens said, “but you can’t just let that go.”

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The committee didn’t vote on the proposal. Stevens said he’d meet
with both sides next week before deciding next steps, adding that the
four-hour limit he proposed “is not in concrete.”

Guillen said his group’s main concern is individuals who file
multiple requests for information that they don’t even wind up
reviewing.

While Stevens cited other states that have similar fees, Moeser said the proposal would be unprecedented under Arizona law.

“It’s essentially a tax on transparency,” he said.

Moeser said the fee could potentially give more reasons for corrupt officials to withhold records.

“Imposing any kind of a user fee on public records like this would
impose a significant burden on members of the public who are just trying
to monitor government,” he said.

Rich Robertson, a former journalist and owner of a Valley private
investigation firm, said he’s concerned about placing a burden on all
people just to deal with a few extreme cases.

Robertson cited a case of an individual who was exonerated after he
and other volunteers at the Arizona Justice Project were able to find
information in public records that proved the man’s innocence after 38
years in prison.

“Had this bill been in effect at that time, the sheriff’s office
could have imposed substantial fees that would have likely been
financially prohibitive to this group of volunteers to be able to go in
and determine if this guy was wrongly convicted,” Robertson said.

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